Urban Appalachian Community Coalition member Michael Maloney and Pauletta Hansel were honored April 6 at the 41st Annual Appalachian Studies Association Conference held in downtown Cincinnati. The conference, “Restitching the Seams: Appalachia Beyond Its Borders,” drew nearly 1,000 regional, national, and international leaders, scholars, educators, service providers, activists, advocates, and artists, was
Michael Maloney, local Appalachian activist, received the Cratis D. Williams/James S. Brown Service Award for exemplary contributions to Appalachia and Appalachian studies. A native of Kentucky’s Breathitt County, Maloney has made substantive contributions to the region, to Appalachian Studies, and to the Appalachian Studies Association. His long career of scholarship, organizing, and advocacy on behalf of the region and its people has included founding the Urban Appalachian Council and its successor, the Urban Appalachian Community Coalition; serving as a founding member of the Appalachian Studies Association, conducting a longitudinal study of needs in the Cincinnati Metropolitan Area beginning in 1970 which is now in its fifth edition; and providing management consultancy to over 30 non-profit organizations in rural and urban Appalachia.
Pauletta Hansel, Cincinnati’s first Poet Laureate and also a Core Member of the Urban Appalachian Community Coalition, received Berea College’s Weatherford Award for best Appalachian Poetry Book of 2017 for her newest collection, Palindrome. Written in response to her mother’s dementia, Palindrome portrays two generations of Appalachian women in flux. A judge said Hansel’s collection of poetry “is a meditation not only on what it means to lose a parent to dementia, but it makes new the meaning of the word palindrome as it journeys back into memory then forward into a diminishing present, seeking all the while a point in time where we can be still, with reverence for those we love most.”
Join us in congratulating Mike and Pauletta for these acknowledgments of their accomplishments!